


Irresponsible

by Moving_In_Retrograde



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1940s, Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Fluff, Gay Disaster Shiro (Voltron), Keith is a Tease (Voltron), M/M, Pining Keith (Voltron), Pining Shiro (Voltron), Pre-Kerberos Mission, Pre-Relationship, Secret Relationship, Shiro (Voltron) is a Dork, Shiro is whipped, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:40:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26113549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moving_In_Retrograde/pseuds/Moving_In_Retrograde
Summary: “Keith,” Shiro asked. “What do you think this is?”
Relationships: Keith & Shiro (Voltron), Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 72





	Irresponsible

“Will you marry me?” Shiro asked breathily, wobbling slightly on his knee. Keith laughed and watched Shiro finish with his shoelaces and get to his feet again. 

“Your flirting is shameful, officer,” Keith teased with a thin smirk. Shiro gave a good-natured shrug and offered a large palm; Keith took it.

“Should I be embarrassed by just how much I like you?” he questioned smoothly, pulling Keith closer.

“See, doing it again,” the cadet noted. They swayed slowly to the music, although on Keith’s part he was more stomping right and left than actually dancing. He was sure Shiro did very well with dancing - as with everything - but the man didn’t seem to mind his clumsiness and made no effort to show off. 

“What am I doing?” Shiro asked after a moment when the expression on his face settled into something more intense and thoughtful. Keith didn’t know whether it was a rhetorical question, or even if Shiro was still having the same conversation.

“Making me think I actually have a chance,” Keith responded. His eyes traced Shiro’s worrisome features, amused at how easily the words upset him.

“Keith,” Shiro asked. “What do you think this is?”

Keith blinked and looked away, eyes tracing the dim outlines of the room around them. Frank Sinatra’s voice gently sang in the background to the rising swell of the music; Shiro’s worktable, usually riddled with papers, was now clean, all but a bottle of wine and two standard-issue tall water glasses. The school had no candles but the desktop lamp worked well enough; yellow light spilled upon the thick carpet, drawing large shadows across the office. Military life wasn’t the most romantic thing one could imagine, but Shiro made it work. All in all, together, it looked like a date. Their first real date. 

Keith stepped away and made for the player, watching the record spin like it was the most fascinating thing in the universe. 

“I don’t know, Shiro,” he answered, all put-upon innocence.

“You are my superior officer,” he raised a playful shoulder, and Shiro’s eyes traced the movement, “so technically this shouldn’t exist.”

“Don’t play me like that,” Shiro chided softly, lips curling despite himself.

Keith shrugged unsympathetically. “It’s not exactly unfair. You were the one to ask me.”

“Alright,” Shiro smiled, head lowering in defeat. The silence naturally settled between them, but it was light enough Keith barely took note of it. Shiro watched him, eyes glowing with soft reflections of the desk lamp. 

“I have feelings for you. ‘You really gonna make me say it?”

Keith suppressed a smirk, but only barely so. He knew, of course. They both knew. Still, until recently, it was unspoken between them. 

Keith was a cadet at a military boarding school, Shiro was an enlisted officer. Keith was eighteen. Shiro was twenty-six. Shiro’s career, everything he’d worked for, it could all come easily undone if they had been discovered. 

It placed a permanent distance between them. Even now; especially now that they were alone. Keith shouldn’t indulge it, even in his head, and yet with Shiro saying things like that… Keith wanted to. 

Shiro approached him, steps quiet. Keith had to put a hand forward to warrant some space between them, even as the officer leaned closer. His hands came up to frame Keith’s face as they watched each other.

“Shiro,” the cadet warned, tense at the sudden change in their dynamic, “Don’t.”

Out of the two of them, Shiro had to be the one to keep a level head. When everything started, Keith had been the one to kiss Shiro. The first and only kiss they ever had - and it happened when Shiro was still his mentor, barely three months after their first meeting. Shiro pushed him away, naturally. 

All in all, it was a rough time. Keith managed to form a stupid crush in the four months they knew each other, and Shiro pushing him away right before he had to be deployed made him go through a year of brooding.

But; Shiro wrote him letters. Monthly, at first, then weekly. Keith remembered the strange feeling of realization he got, reading through one of them half a year in and suddenly thinking that it wasn’t quite regular for a person to want to talk to someone they rejected. 

It was perhaps true for both of them that they only had each other to talk to. Keith never really had eyes for anyone but Shiro ever since their meeting. Shiro, who lost many of his friends at the front, and had no family or contacts, none but Keith.

Over the time Shiro was absent, Keith found himself outgrowing his old crush and instead falling quite deeply in love. It was not supposed to go anywhere, of course.

When Shiro came back, everything was different. Keith grew older, managed to get friendly enough with a few chosen people, went out with a girl, and prominently, became the top of his class. Shiro had a scar across the bridge of his nose, short hair that was quickly greying, and crippling PTSD. 

When they met, Shiro circled his arms around him and lifted him, and laughed as they looked at each other; and Keith just knew at that moment, that Shiro had feelings for him from the beginning. 

He broke it off with his girlfriend a couple of days later. She cried and threw things at him, but a few weeks later began dating a guy who, funnily enough, that same year became her husband. Keith wasn’t invited to the wedding. 

He couldn’t care less. Shiro was there: his body, his voice, his warmth, his waiting arms, his soft hands, his big heart. Shiro was there, and even if they weren’t anything, even if they weren’t going to be anything, Keith loved him and wanted him in his life. 

Although it was perhaps a touch too satisfying when Shiro began going after him. He had to do so very discreetly, but it still involved all the most romantic, cheesiest things: gas station gifts, ice-cream trips, Shiro getting jealous for the first time - there’s something you don’t see every day... 

Most of the time Keith abused the power he had over the officer, using teasing and flirting to his own advantage, and other times entirely disregarded the man, perhaps somewhat in retaliation for the spoiled kiss and a year of heartache. Shiro played the game well, didn’t seem to mind letting Keith walk all over him. Although at times his romantic nature took over and Keith had to maintain the distance between them, because he knew Shiro wouldn’t. Now, for instance. 

The officer watched him, contemplative, as they stood close. Keith’s hand still rested on his chest. “My career is my responsibility, Keith. I’m capable of making my own decisions.”

Keith fought to hide a small smile. “And what kind of decision would that be?”

The officer didn’t answer. They looked at each other for what felt like a minute, until Keith realized they were skirting dangerously close to what they weren’t supposed to be doing. As much as he wanted to have another try at that kiss - impress Shiro this time, he’s had some practice since then; revel in it, feel Shiro’s hands on him, - still, he knew that if they started now, the chances were, they wouldn’t stop where they should. He knew, realized now more than he had before, that his hotheaded nature was going to ruin both of them if he let it. 

“I don’t want to lose you to my own impatience,” Keith said. “I’m not 16 anymore. I’m willing to wait, Shiro, as long as it takes. I’m willing to have nothing at all if only I know you’ll get the life you deserve to have.”

Shiro opened his mouth, surely to interject, and closed it. 

Somehow it no longer felt like an innocent game. Keith made it serious, somehow. Stupid. Normally, he masked the intensity of his feelings under put-upon flirting and heavy teasing, but at times he forgot to cover it up, didn't manage to sound quite careless enough, didn't realize. The more time had passed, the harder it was getting to play with Shiro. Too often now Keith couldn't make jokes anymore. Failed to bristle or feel irritated at his own vulnerability. Compliant and powerless, and unwilling to resist it. 

Shiro wrapped his arms around him, and Keith’s hand between them fell away on its own, failing to keep the necessary distance. 

“You amaze me,” Shiro confessed, looking Keith in the eye, “I don’t know many guys my own age who are this mature and self-aware.”

Keith signed, warm and cozy in Shiro’s arms. 

“I wanted to impress you so bad when I was younger,” he said, face heating a bit. “I think you could kill me with those words, had you said them a couple of years ago.”

“And now?” 

“Well,” Keith grinned, “Now I know you’re right.”

They laughed at it together. Then Shiro grew quiet and his expression sobered, and he looked at Keith for a long while.

“I love you,” he whispered. “I don’t know how much longer I can pretend that this isn’t serious.” 

“You…” Keith gave a quiet breath and it got lost between them.

“You’re making it so hard to resist you right now,” he joked, but it fell flat. 

“I know,” Shiro smiled, but it was nervous, unsure, unfocused. And all of a sudden, Keith felt nervous too. “This was my plan all along.”

*

Then bent down and kissed Keith tenderly on the mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> For some reason, military 1940s is peak Sheith for me?? There's not much alluding to this in the text but you have to imagine them wearing the old uniforms. You have to!!
> 
> Also, can you guess what song was playing while they danced?  
> Submit your suggestions in the comments ;)


End file.
